Larry Fink is a financial executive and a billionaire known for being the co-founder, chairman, and CEO of BlackRock (NYSE: BLK), the largest investment fund in the world with over $10 trillion in assets under management (AUM). In fact, the company is so prominent that many pose the question: does BlackRock own everything? Today, we’ll cover how much of that goes to the CEO himself and reveal Larry Fink’s net worth.
How did Larry Fink get rich?
Compared to the business world’s more prominent CEOs, such as Elon Musk, Warren Buffett, and Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Fink is virtually anonymous despite heading one of the world’s largest investment companies.
Having co-founded BlackRock in 1988 and led it as its CEO, first under The Blackstone Group and as an independent company from 1998, Fink’s wealth is almost entirely derived from his position and jaw-dropping annual salary in the investment company. Solely due to his engagement with BlackRock, Larry Fink reached billionaire status for the first time in 2018.
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In 2022 alone, Larry Fink received over $32.7 million in total compensation from BlackRock, listed as follows:
- $1.5 million base salary;
- $7.25 million bonus;
- $23,250,554 value of stock awards;
- $725,555 in all other compensation.
Who is the richest person of BlackRock?
Who is BlackRock’s largest shareholder?
Larry Fink is BlackRock’s single largest individual shareholder, followed by Susan Wagner and Robert Kapito, both co-founders of the company themselves, Richard Kushel and Murry S. Gerber.
As of his latest SEC fillings in February 2024, Larry Fink owns 414,146 BlackRock shares. Currently priced at $761.28, his position in the company alone is worth over $315.28 million.
Larry Fink’s net worth revealed
As you have seen, the figures thrown around BlackRock’s chairman and CEO are enormous, whether you take into account his stock portfolio, his annual salary, or both.
The number is derived from publicly available data. It considers his company shares, company salary, and directly owned real estate. It also includes his Finch Farm in North Salem, New York, on the “Billionaire’s Dirt Road,” which he bought from the actor Stanley Tucci for $3.7 million.
Larry Fink and the world’s largest investment company
Together with seven partners, Larry Fink founded BlackRock as a subdivision of Blackstone Group (NYSE: BX) and assumed the role of its director and CEO. BlackRock split from Blackstone in 1994, with Fink retaining his previously held company roles. In 1998, the company became independent, and Fink became its chairman. He proceeded with a successful IPO in 1999 and turned the company public.
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In 2003, Fink negotiated the resignation of Richard Grasso, the controversial CEO of the New York Stock Exchange, who was accused of an excessive and controversial $188.5 million golden parachute deemed too much for a non-profit NYSE organization. The charges were later dropped as NYSE changed its status from non-profit to for-profit.
In 2006, Larry Fink spearheaded a successful merger with Merrill Lynch Investment Managers, effectively doubling the company’s asset management portfolio. The same year, BlackRock bought the Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village housing complex in Manhattan for $5.4 billion, which represented the largest residential real estate deal in U.S. history. However, the project defaulted and lost millions of dollars for its clients, including $500 million for the California Pension and Retirement System.
In 2008, the United States government hired BlackRock to alleviate the industry’s financial troubles following the Great Recession. The contract (which lacked competitive bidding) led Larry Fink to form relationships with President Barack Obama’s administration members. This would lead to accusations of conflicts of interest as BlackRock later hired many former executives.
In December 2009, BlackRock purchased Barclays Global Investors and became the world’s largest money-management company in the process. By 2016, the company had amassed $5 trillion under management and employed over 12,000 people in 27 countries.
Larry Fink’s public image
Despite Larry Fink’s net worth and crucial influence in the investing world, he is not a very publicly known person.
However, there is a lot to the billionaire CEO. In 2016, he received the ABANA Achievement Award in New York City for outstanding banking and financial contributions and for furthering professional cooperation between the United States, the Middle East, and North Africa.
In 2018, Fink was ranked 28th on the Forbes’ Most Powerful People list. A year later, he received the Charles Schwab Financial Innovation Award. In a move that echoed the one in 2008, the U.S. government again turned to BlackRock to help alleviate distressed securities.
BlackRock’s embracement of ESG investing
In 2018, in an annual open letter to CEOs, Larry Fink called for corporations to actively participate in preserving the environment, bettering their communities, and diversifying their workforces, essentially embracing ESG investing. This goal has been reiterated in the next year’s letter.
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In 2020’s letter, Fink further highlighted environmental sustainability as an essential goal and announced that it will become one of the principal factors guiding BlackRock’s future investments. For example, he announced the company would cut ties with their previous investments with considerable environmental risk, such as thermal coal production.
“Every company and every industry will be transformed by the transition to a net-zero world. The question is, will you lead, or will you be led?”
– Larry Fink in a CEO letter
However, Fink’s company has also been the target of several controversies, especially in the ESG domain. Several anti-war activists and organizations staged protests in 2018 against BlackRock’s investments in military stocks and weapon manufacturers through its U.S. Aerospace & Defense ETF.
Despite Fink’s reiterating his focus on environmental sustainability, in 2021, he was named one of America’s “top climate villains” by The Guardian due to his company profiting from deforestation and his efforts to outvote shareholders’ pro-climate resolutions.
Larry Fink’s net worth – the bottom line
If Larry Fink’s net worth is any indication, heading the world’s largest investment fund comes with hefty financial benefits. With his current net worth estimated at $1.1 billion, he remains one of the highest-paid CEOs on Earth today.
Although relatively anonymous to the general public, he remains one of the business’s most powerful figures, yielding enormous influence in many aspects of the economy. Despite controversies surrounding his involvement with the U.S. government and a somewhat hypocritical stance on climate change and environmental sustainability, Fink remains at the helm of a green transition to a different investing future.
Disclaimer: The content on this site should not be considered investment advice. Investing is speculative. When investing, your capital is at risk.
